When I first came Shultz asked me my initial impressions of the Department. I had been here about six weeks. And I told him that I never in my life had encountered such an absolutely superb bunch of people. And he sort of smiled at me, and I said, “But what bothers me is that on the other hand I’d never in my life encountered such a thoroughly screwed up organization, and what I don’t understand is how you can have both. How the people could be so God damned good, and the organization be so thoroughly screwed up.” And I’m still bothered by that, because I don’t know any other place where you find such high caliber persons, where you also find things so badly run. And I still find it. I happened to think the world of many of the people in PER now. Yet they went ahead and they gave an award of $100,000, more than $100,000 U.S. dollars, to somebody to get that person to stop suing the State Department. A clear case of blackmail. And their rationale was, “We have so many class action suits for women, and class action suits for blacks, we don’t want to get involved in other class action suits on a religious basis.” And that was totally ___. There was ample information, they could have fought this one. It was a lack of will, and people sensed that. I’ve seen again and again that we make a recommendation for disciplinary action and unless the thing is so heinous that they’re afraid to say no — afraid the newspapers would find out about it — the chances are they’ll dick around and try to knock it down. We don’t want to be that harsh on the person. I’m not talking about guillotining somebody, or hanging, or boil them in oil. I’m talking about a few weeks suspension for something that is very serious — misuse of a lot of money, millions of dollars. It was like pulling teeth because nobody wants to be responsible for it.

“I am proud that I found a constructive way to take a stand on an issue that matters to me. But I can’t help wondering what the department would look like if there were more of us willing to speak up about issues that matter, large and small, regardless of whether or not we think we can actually change anything. Or as one senior officer pointed out to me, we dissent every day—but the difference is whom we dissent to and how far we are willing to go with it. At heart, it’s a question of integrity. Sometimes just adding your voice is enough.”

The following is an excerpt from an exchange with John Kirby, the State Department Spokesperson during the Daily Press Briefing of August 18, 2015:

QUESTION: John, if I can change quickly. Just a clarification I wanted to get from the State Department on Secretary Clinton’s emails. Is it still the position of the State Department that no emails that came through the server were classified at their origination on the server, as opposed to being retroactively classified?

MR KIRBY: It is still our view that we have no indication that any of the emails that have been upgraded —

QUESTION: That’s not what he’s asking. So he’s talking about the ones that were —

MR KIRBY:But I don’t have to answer the question you ask. I just have to respond the way I want to. (Laughter.) So let me finish, and then if I don’t get at it – I wasn’t even through my first sentence and you challenged me.

Kenneth M. Quinn, the only three-time winner of an AFSA dissent award, spent 32 years in the Foreign Service and served as ambassador to Cambodia from 1996 to 1999. He has been president of the World Food Prize Foundation since 2000. In the September issue of the Foreign Service Journal, he writes about integrity and openness as requirements for an effective Foreign Service. Except below:

I can attest to the fact that challenging U.S. policy from within is never popular, no matter how good one’s reasons are for doing so. In some cases, dissent can cost you a job—or even end a career. And even when there are no repercussions, speaking out may not succeed in changing policy.

Yet as I reflect on my 32 years in the Foreign Service, I am more convinced than ever how critically important honest reporting and unvarnished recommendations are. And that being the case, ambassadors and senior policy officials should treasure those who offer different views and ensure that their input receives thoughtful consideration, no matter how much they might disagree with it.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry uncorks a bottle of champagne en route from Andrews Air Force Base to Stockholm, Sweden as he celebrates the first press briefing at the U.S. Department of State Department by his new Spokesperson, Jen Psaki, on May 13, 2013. [State Department photo / Public Domain]

QUESTION: It does seem as if – well, that the airport is – continue to be shelled, most of the planes even are damaged, I don’t – and the Embassy is near the airport, I mean, and it doesn’t seem as if there’s been any movement on any type of evacuation. So I’m just wondering what’s going on.

MS. PSAKI: Well, we’re obviously deeply concerned about the level of violence in Libya and some of the incidents you referred to. Every day, we make assessments about the level of violence and the impact on our personnel there, but I don’t have anything to predict for you or outline in terms of any changes to our security posture or level of staffing on the ground.

QUESTION: I mean, it seems as if there wouldn’t be any way for those employees to get out unless you had some kind of airlift because the airport is inoperable right now.

MS. PSAKI: Well, again, Elise, I think it’s safe to say that we evaluate every single factor when we’re making determinations about our staff. There’s nothing more important than the safety, almost nothing more important than the safety and security of our staff, but we do that in private and I have nothing to outline for you here from – publicly.

QUESTION: Is Ambassador Satterfield in Libya now or here?

MS. PSAKI: I know – I’m not sure, actually, where he is. We can check and see if we can get that information to you.

Meanwhile in the “why are we still in Tripoli edition?”our ambassador tweets this:

Rumor control: the US has no/no lethal drones in Libyan airspace. We are not engaged in this fighting, just trying to stay safe under fire.

Ambassador Richard E. Hoagland, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs (SCA) gave his remarks at the 2014 Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies Pride Conference on April 16, 2014.

The following is an excerpt:

On June 5, 1985, on my way to my very first day of training as a newly-minted U.S. diplomat, I glanced across our national Mall and saw the U.S. Capitol and its iconic dome. My heart was bursting with pride in the career I was embarking on to serve my country. At the very same time, I said to myself – and I meant it – “No one will ever hurt me because I am gay.” Yes, that was about 15 years after Stonewall, but it was also only about 30 years after the McCarthy purges of hundreds of gay diplomats and other public servants from the U.S. government. During the very first close-door briefing we newly-minted diplomats had from Diplomatic Security, we heard, “We don’t want homosexuals in the Foreign Service. If you are, we’ll hunt you down and drum you out!” I thought, “Yeah, you just try it.”

Although it was becoming a gray area, by the beginning of the 1990s, it was still possible that one’s security clearance could be jeopardized for being gay. After five years, it was time for my security clearance to be renewed, and – yes – it was held up for months and months. I finally got fed up. I went to the head of Diplomatic Security and said, “You have no reason to deny my security clearance. I want it on my desk in one week, or I’m going to the Washington Post.” It was on my desk in one week. Ten years later, by 2000, it was still nearly a radical act to include material about LGBT rights in the State Department’s annual Country Human Rights Reports. It wasn’t until just a handful of years ago that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared in a major speech at the United Nations in Geneva, “LGBT rights are human rights. Period.”
[…]
In closing, let me add one personal word of caution. There are times and places where I believe we need to temper our idealism with at least a certain degree of realpolitik. In our desire to do good, we should never forget the terribly important maxim, “First do no harm.” There are countries in the world, whether religiously or culturally deeply conservative, that will react to our values and goals with backlash against their own LGBT citizens. We should maintain enough humility to remember that we are terribly new at promoting LGBT human rights as U.S. foreign policy. Of course we want to do good – but we should do it, with patience, in a way that results in the maximum benefit for those we want to help.

Ambassador Hoagland, a career diplomat was previously U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan (2008-2011), and U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan (2003-2006). Life After Jerusalem recently posted about the five current ambassadors who are openly gay (see What’s Wrong With This Picture?). All five are also non-career political appointees.

Here is Doug Frantz, the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs via nextgov.com:

“Social media is an interactive platform, so if you wait to come back to the State Department to get clearance on how to respond to a question over Twitter it will take days if not weeks and the conversation will be over,” Frantz said. “So you want people to be engaged. You want them to be willing and able to take responsible risks…Don’t take a big crazy risk and try to change our policy on Iran, but if you’re behaving responsibly, we can expect small mistakes.”

In many ways, the department is vulnerable to those risks whether or not officials are actively engaging on social media.

Frantz cited the case of a diplomatic security officer and his wife who were expelled from India after making derogatory comments about the country on their personal Facebook pages. “I tell people never tweet anything you don’t want to see on the front page of the Washington Post,” Frantz said.

We should be impressed at this enlightened approach of employees being allowed to afford small mistakes. Except that elements of the State Department continue to harass Foreign Service bloggers who write in their private capacity on blogs and other social media sites. Remember my Conversation with Self About Serial Blog Killers and the 21st Century Statecraft? Different folks get on and off the bus, but this is just as real today.

Harassment, as always, is conducted without a paper trail unless, it’s a PR nightmare like Peter Van Buren, in which case, there is a paper trail. So an FSO-blogger’s difficulties in obtaining an onward assignment has nothing to do with his/her blog, or his/her tweets. Just bad luck of the draw, see? Oh, stop doing that winky wink stuff with your eyes!

Anybody know if there is an SOP on how to intimidate diplo-bloggers into going back into writing in their diaries and hiding those under their pillows until the year 2065? Dammit! No SOP needed?

So, no witnesses, no paper trail and no bruises, just nasty impressive stuff done under the table. Baby, we need a hero —

“I would advise anyone going overseas to take our security training very seriously, to participate in the crises management exercises that are held at post every two years and if possible to volunteer, if you’re in Washington, to serve on a crisis task force, so that you get a sense of what happens from a Washington perspective – as you can get a sense of what happens overseas from participating in crisis management exercises. I would then say, “Go out and enjoy yourself, because there is absolutely no point in worrying about what is going to happen to you – because what is going to happen is going to happen.” Worrying doesn’t make any difference. And if you have joined a community and if you have put your energies into participating in a community, and if you have gone through training about what to do during a crisis, just depend on yourself and one another, and you can get through it.”